Hi All,
Ouch the morning after the night before...low light conditions are good.
Decided to head off to the Santa Clause village today to visit the 'real' Santa. Magic day as it was overcast, the area was covered with a fresh blanket of snow and there was no wind.
It is really worth the effort to make a visit and almost criminal not to take children. It was the picture perfect winter village with lots of fun to be had at a steep price. Sure it is a tourist trap but it is not necessary to spend much to enjoy the place.
First stop was to the reindeer sled rides and we watched a couple of people get taken for a short ride. Pretty lame but the kids loved it and it was great to see some reindeers in action. Not exactly the ride we imagined so gave it a miss.
Next stop was the husky ride. Again a bit expensive but we managed to get in and wander around the dogs without paying the entrance fee. actually no one told us about the entrance fee and we only realised on the way out. It was brilliant watching the huskies pulling the sled. They really love to run and get very vocal when they are about to start pulling. Great to watch.
We also would have liked to go for a skidoo ride but the trips were booked until 230pm and the light would have been fading. So we went to visit Santa instead.
The multilingual elf at the door stalled us and asked what we wanted
for Christmas next year. We had no idea but maybe we should have asked for global peace, water for Australia farmers or food for the hungry but we didn´t Vanessa said 'maybe by then we´ll need another
holiday'and I added that maybe I´ll get a red surfboard. The elf responded to this by saying that lots of Christmas wishlists were
improvised at the doorway.
It was a 40 min wait and we were in to find out whether we were naughty or nice. Obviously this is a subject of interpretation as we are clearly nice even if Santa was not so certain. Well he wished us Merry Christmas like he had never done it before. Vanessa wanted to sing him a song but he was a bit pressed for time. I think it went 'Santa Clause you ...... where´s my ..... bike' or something along those lines. Probably best she didn't as he might have put both of us into the naughty category.
We had our photo taken with Santa but there was no way in the world we were going to pay 30 Euro for 6 postcard size prints.
We hand delivered 2 important letters to Santa´s Number one helper elf for Vanessa's niece and nephew makayla and Ben .We hope a reply will be on the way before Christmas but this may just be wishful thinking as Santa is very busy.
Caught the people crammed local bus back the 8km to town past the impressive and illuminated ski jump.
Time to relax a little and pack as we have to move to different accommodation tomorrow, Rudolf Hostel,then back to Helsinki the following day then flying off to Russia!
Bye,
David and Vanessa
